Many expect Whitman to address what HP plans to do with webOS, which former CEO Leo Apotheker decided to kill back in August

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has had a bit of a rocky year due to a few decisions made by former CEO Leo Apotheker, but current CEO Meg Whitman has been cleaning up the mess piece by piece, including deciding the fate of the company's mobile operating system webOS.

Whitman is expected to finally announce the company's plans for webOS today at an all-hands meeting set for 10:30 a.m. Pacific.

Back in August of this year, Apotheker made two startling announcements that rocked HP's world: HP was selling off its PC unit (which was later switched to a spin-off PC unit instead), and the company was killing off its TouchPad tablet with accompanying mobile operating system webOS.

HP acquired webOS from gadget-maker Palm Inc. in April 2010. The OS was initially used for smartphones and later adapted to HP's TouchPad tablet. But due to problems like overproduction and slow hardware releases, the tablet didn't sell the way many expected and ended up costing the company $100 million in unsold inventory, according to Apple Insider.

Despite the TouchPad's failure, investors were shocked at the death of webOS as well as a spin-off PC unit and the company's stock took a plunge. Apotheker was eventually fired September 22, 2011 and Whitman took the helm.

After taking care of the PC spin-off issue, Whitman is now expected to address HP's plans with webOS. Last month, Whitman said she wanted to think through the webOS situation thoroughly before making any solid decisions.

Many expect that the all-hands meeting this morning will provide the answers many have been waiting for.

Updated 12/9/2012 @ 1:52pm

HP has just announced that it will be taking its webOS mobile operating system open source. The company still hasn't committed to further producing its own hardware based around the operating system, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't change its mind in the future. Here's the press release:

HP today announced it will contribute the webOS software to the open source community.

HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS. By combining the innovative webOS platform with the development power of the open source community, there is the opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.

webOS offers a number of benefits to the entire ecosystem of web applications. For developers, applications can be easily built using standard web technologies. In addition, its single integrated stack offers multiplatform portability. For device manufacturers, it provides a single web-centric platform to run across multiple devices. As a result, the end user benefits from a fast, immersive user experience.

“webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”

HP will make the underlying code of webOS available under an open source license. Developers, partners, HP engineers and other hardware manufacturers can deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions into the marketplace.

HP will engage the open source community to help define the charter of the open source project under a set of operating principles:

The goal of the project is to accelerate the open development of the webOS platform

HP will be an active participant and investor in the project

Good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation

Software will be provided as a pure open source project

HP also will contribute ENYO, the application framework for webOS, to the community in the near future along with a plan for the remaining components of the user space.

The TouchPad has a button too you know, it does exactly what the swipe-up gesture does, and generally exactly what the android home button does. I think most people new to webOS with the touchpad probably just use the button, but those coming from the phones (me for example) tend to use the gesture. The gestures aren't even the same, but still feel more natural than finding a physical button.

HP originally intended for only the button to be used, and the swipe-up gesture wasn't originally in webOS 3.0; it was added in 3.0.2 by popular demand from webOS phone users.

The part your example is missing is the "sort through the list of all your apps to find the one you want to open". WebOS when you swish up, shows only open apps, so you can quickly, with one hand switch from email, to phone, to contact search, to spreadseet, to whatever apps you are runnning. The more you mutitask, the more time it saves, the heavier you multitask, the more powerful of a tool it becomes.

"Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment -- same piece of hardware -- paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be." -- Steve Ballmer